


Anticlockwise

by everysecondtues (tuesday)



Category: All the Queen's Men (2001)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-20
Updated: 2009-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-04 19:14:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tuesday/pseuds/everysecondtues
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eton boys, top secret missions, and recreating Tony's Germany of the 30's.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anticlockwise

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Carmilla](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmilla/gifts).



> Thanks so much to my fabulous beta, Jenn!

A clock is a clock is a clock. Clocks don't care how each differs from the next.

Sometimes, Johnno rather envied clocks this freedom.

—

"We're putting you in the field."

Most of the military code-breakers and researchers Johnno knew would have been horrified; Johnno was intrigued. He didn't get out much, it was true, but he was curious. He knew the war through letters and reports, through lights out and the wail of air raid sirens, bombs dropped overhead. Perhaps he should have been satisfied with that—in a way, he was satisfied with that, with whatever his current lot in life might be. But given the opportunity to walk down new avenues,Johnno would take it.

Besides, there would be an aeroplane involved. Johnno had always wanted to fly.

—

Eton was rather like Tony's Germany of the early 30's. Not only did no one care what time it was, it was almost expected of you to turn anticlockwise. "Eton boys," his mother had said fondly, ruffling his hair.

His father had frowned and hunkered further down behind the solid wall of his newsprint.

"Be careful." His mother leaned close to kiss his forehead, something she hadn't done since primary school. Low, so low he could barely hear her: "Have fun."

—

Johnno was pretty, not handsome. He was not so much resigned to this as grateful. He could have looked like Archie in his dress, andJohnno had yet to reach the age he might be satisfied with "frumpy." O'Rourke was somehow both striking and extremely frightening at the same time in today's white lace affair.

(Franz had been right that he looked much better in trousers.)

Johnno, however, looked pretty and almost delicate in the soft blue dress with flowered print draped over his thin body. He looked like the sort of girl his father had always hoped he'd bring home someday.

Somehow, Johnno suspected with no little regret as he stared at his reflection, this would not go over well in substitute.

Cinching up the back of Johnno's dress, Tony asked, smiling and teasing, "Ever do this at Eton?"

"Not with the women's clothing," Johnno answered, smiling himself at the way Tony's fingers lingered in something like surprise. Then Tony laughed and patted his shoulder.

"You'll do fine." Tony looked over in obvious despair at Archie and his smeared lipstick and O'Rourke's struggles with a shoulder-length wig. "At least you've already mastered the art of makeup."

—

"Jump!" O'Rourke demanded.

Intellectually, Johnno knew the wall was not that high, that many people made the plunge below with no issues whatsoever. O'Rourke had led by example and hopped off the edge with aplomb, landed with an action hero graceJohnno knew was not meant for him. Johnno was books and facts and languages, sliding into another's thoughts like a summer home.

But trying to slide into O'Rourke's devil may care, cocksure attitude was at this moment an impossibility. Johnno could understand it, but he couldn't feel it, channel it into his own ability to let fly briefly into the air. Johnno had always wanted to be a pilot, but there was a reason that was left to his mouse.

"Come on!"

Stomach in his throat, Johnno swallowed hard and stepped gently over.

—

Johnno spent much of his military career attempting to mentally be someone, something else. He was a codebreaker, but in order to do his job, he needed to be the code or the person writing it. He was accustomed to slipping on other identities like trying on a pair of trousers to be discarded at the end of a day's work.

He was not accustomed to slipping on another identity and feeling it fit like a second self that had been there the whole time and simply waiting for acknowledgement. Johnno smoothed down the soft cotton and thought of the aeroplane and Germany, the trip the next day.

Despite what the others may have thought, Johnno wasn't naive. He knew that this mission would not be all seeing the sights and looking fabulous in heels. Between their team and the Enigma lay people with guns—huge guns and the knowledge to use them—not to mention the necessity of throwing himself out of a perfectly decent aeroplane during an air raid. Johnno was quite proficient at maths and statistics, and chances were good that not everyone would make it back. Chances were very good that if someone didn't, that someone would beJohnno. All O'Rourke's training couldn't make him a soldier.

And yet—and yet none of that was as dangerous as this moment, standing in his flat and slowly sliding the blue dress on again, not for queen and country and the precarious outcome of a long and devastating war, but for himself, because the long cotton felt right fitted against his skin.

—

Despite all the varied head-spaces Johnno had occupied during his career, it was rare that he had any doubts about who and what he was. He'd gone to Eton, had devoted a great deal of his life to the pursuit of knowledge, and had been raised with a certain etiquette and expectations. He was the product of the life he'd lived; he was a gentlemen. What that meant, Johnno couldn't quite articulate in any of the five languages he knew.

A clock is a clock is a clock. But many of them differed greatly in their means of operation. If asked, Johnno would have said Tony was a clock, too. It remained to be seen if they were of a kind.

—

O'Rourke, Johnno decided, operated on military time.

—

Archie operated on military time, but it was a completely different sort of military. This was actually something of a relief, becauseJohnno thought O'Rourke was enough O'Rourke for two countries.

(Though in truth, Johnno wouldn't mind two.)

—

"Has anyone ever told you," said one of Johnno's Eton boys, a good friend named Will—most definitely not Bill, and God save you if you called him Billy—"that you would make a very pretty girl?"

Johnno smiled, not at all demure, and leaned into Will's hand. "I think you will find me a consummate gentleman."

This, at least, was never in doubt.

—

After the mission—after the explosions of the air raid, the fights with German soldiers, the shock of the knife sliding in, and the unexpected joy of directing a plane to flight based off nothing more than a few scribbled directions affixed to the control—everything quieted down a bit. The brass was quite relieved that they hadn't actually procured an Enigma; O'Rourke was delighted that Archie had taken away more than the official intended lessons and punched a member of said brass in the nose; and Romy and Franz seemed as though they were settling into Britain with ease. Archie's unexpected adoption even seemed to go over well with his wife at home.

There was no reason for Johnno to feel restless, incomplete. He submitted his name for further field missions, heart in his throat, though he knew little was likely to come of it.

The war went on, such that Johnno wondered if there would ever come a time a war wouldn't be on. Translation and code work continued to demand attention. It ought to have been easy to slip into the status quo. It ought to have been easy to forget blue cotton and another man's smile.

—

Tony didn't seem surprised to see Johnno at his door. Beside him, Franz grinned and said, "Yes, yes, you were right that we'd see him again. You queens like to stick together."

Tony shook his head, lips quirked with something like amusement, something like joy, and pulled Johnno inside. Tony's hand was warm where it stretched across the back of Johnno's neck; Franz's eyes welcoming as Johnno stumbled forward.

Clocks didn't care. But perhaps, Johnno acknowledged, this was better.


End file.
